I am rereading St. Francis de Sales’s
Treatise on the Love of God (which, by the way, I recommend to anyone
who has or can muster a tolerance for flowery language). The
circumstances of my first reading are somewhat shrouded by the mists of time,
but I think it must have been about the period when I started graduate school.
No, it hasn’t been that long; it
just feels that way.
Graduate school certainly has had
its effect, however; for the preface and first chapter, which I remember
finding a bit dull, proved “quite the opposite, in fact.” The more you
know, the more you catch. This time, two things struck me, both on a
purely secular level, but both having perhaps spiritual morals (if I may so
speak).
The first was the following
passage:
Soon
afterwards his Highness came over the mountains, and finding the bailiwicks of
Chablais, Gaillard and Ternier, which are in the environs of Geneva, well
disposed to receive the Catholic faith which had been banished thence by force
of wars and revolts about seventy years before, he resolved to re-establish the
exercise thereof in all the parishes, and to abolish that of heresy, and whereas
on the one side there were many obstacles to this great blessing from those
considerations which are called reasons of State, and on the other side some
persons as yet not well instructed in the truth made resistance against this so
much-desired establishment, his Highness surmounted the first difficulty by the
invincible constancy of his zeal for the Catholic religion, and the second by an
extraordinary gentleness and prudence. For he had the chief and most obstinate
called together ,and made a speech unto them with so lovingly persuasive an
eloquence that almost all, vanquished by the sweet violence of his fatherly
love towards them, cast the weapons of their obstinacy at his feet, and their
souls into the hands of Holy Church.
And
allow me, my dear readers I pray you, to say this word in passing. One may
praise many rich actions of this great Prince, in which I see the proof of his
valour and military knowledge, which with just cause is admired through all
Europe. But for my part I cannot sufficiently extol the establishment of
the Catholic religion
in these three
bailiwicks which I
have just mentioned, having seen
in it so
many marks of
piety, united with
so many and
various acts of
prudence, constancy, magnanimity, justice and mildness, that I seemed to
see in this one little trait, as in a miniature, all that is praised in princes
who have in times past with most fervour striven to advance the glory of God
and the Church. The stage was small, but the action great. And as that ancient craftsman
was never so much esteemed for his great pieces as he was admired for making a
ship of ivory fitted with all its gear, in so tiny a volume that the wings of a
bee covered all, so I esteem more that which this great Prince did at that time
in this small corner of his dominions, than many more brilliant actions which
others extol to the heavens.
It’s a beautiful bit of prose, and
a lovely little tribute to … well, if I’ve got my dates right, King Henry of
Navarre. Yes, that’s right: the dude who
was reviled in England for becoming Catholic when he ascended (in order to ascend?)
the throne of France, reportedly observing that Paris was “worth a Mass.” (Talk about Machiavellian ragione di state!) He also, of course, in his younger Huguenot
days, narrowly escaped the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. As Catholic king, he extended toleration to
Protestants and (wait for it) was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic. Apparently some people called him “Good King
Henry.” Who knew? St. Francis, at any rate, seems to have
thought his conversion sincere. And no: it
probably wasn’t royal boot-licking on St. Francis’s part, because Henry had
been assassinated six years earlier, in 1610.
(The Treatise was published in
1616, the year of Shakespeare’s death.)
In any case, St. Francis notes his
previous tendency, “while I was not yet bishop, having more leisure and less
fears for my
writings,” to dedicate his works “ to
princes of the
earth,” avowing a new intention:
but now
being weighed down with my charge, and having a thousand difficulties in
writing, I consecrate all to the princes of heaven, that they may obtain for me
the light requisite, and that if such be the Divine will, these my writings may
be fruitful and profitable to many.
There’s the Renaissance for you:
patronage, independence, and the reformation of one’s life in a few short
paragraphs.
The second thing I noticed was the
way in which the first chapter rung changes on common themes in Renaissance
culture: paradox, order, the macrocosm/microcosm, beauty as a telos … To make a comparison for modern
readers: It would be like a priest today mounting the pulpit to deliver an
opening salvo dealing with Minimalism and Karma. St. Francis is trendy, in a
sixteenth-century sort of way.
Since it’s Sunday, and you may be
in want of a good sermon, I’ll just leave that complete first chapter right
here.
CHAPTER I.
“That for the Beauty of
Human Nature God Has Given the Government of
All the Faculties of the Soul
to the Will.”
Union in distinction
makes order; order
produces agreement; and
proportion and agreement,
incomplete and finished things, make beauty. An army has beauty when it
is composed of parts so ranged in order that their distinction is reduced to
that proportion which they ought to have together for the making of one single
army. For music to be beautiful, the voices must not only be true, clear, and
distinct from one another, but also united together in such a way that there
may arise a just consonance and harmony which is not unfitly termed a
discordant harmony or rather harmonious discord.
Now as the angelic S. Thomas, following the great S.
Denis, says excellently well, beauty and goodness though in some things they
agree, yet still are not one and the same thing: for good is that which pleases
the appetite and will, beauty that which pleases the understanding or
knowledge; or, in other words, good is that which gives pleasure when we enjoy
it, beauty that which gives pleasure when we know it. For which cause in proper
speech we only attribute corporal beauty to the
objects of those
two senses which
are the most
intellectual and most
in the service
of the understanding—namely, sight
and hearing, so
that we do
not say, these
are beautiful odours
or beautiful tastes: but we rightly say, these are beautiful voices and
beautiful colours.
The beautiful then being called beautiful, because
the knowledge thereof gives pleasure, it is requisite that besides the union
and the distinction, the integrity, the order, and the agreement of its parts,
there should be also splendour and brightness that it may be knowable and
visible. Voices to be beautiful must be clear and true; discourses
intelligible; colours brilliant and shining. Obscurity, shade and darkness are
ugly and disfigure all things, because in them nothing is knowable, neither order,
distinction, union nor agreement; which caused S. Denis to say, that “God as
the sovereign beauty is author of the beautiful harmony, beautiful lustre and
good grace which is found in all things, making the distribution and
decomposition of his one ray of beauty spread out, as light, to make all things
beautiful,” willing that to compose beauty there should be agreement, clearness
and good grace.
Certainly, Theotimus, beauty is without effect,
unprofitable and dead, if light and splendour do not make it lively and
effective, whence we term colours lively when they have light and lustre.
But as to animated and living things their beauty is
not complete without good grace, which, besides
the agreement of
perfect parts which
makes beauty, adds
the harmony of
movements, gestures and actions, which is as it were the life and soul
of the beauty of living things. Thus, in the sovereign beauty of our God, we
acknowledge union, yea, unity of essence in the distinction of persons, with an
infinite glory, together with an incomprehensible harmony of all perfections of
actions and motions, sovereignly comprised, and as one would say excellently joined
and adjusted, in the most unique and simple perfection of the pure divine act,
which is God Himself, immutable and invariable, as elsewhere we shall show. God,
therefore, having a will to make all things good and beautiful, reduced the
multitude and distinction of the same to a perfect unity, and, as man would
say, brought them all under a monarchy, making a subordination of one thing to
another and of all things to himself the sovereign Monarch. He reduces all our
members into one body under one head, of many persons he forms a family, of many
families a town, of many towns a province, of many provinces a kingdom, putting
the whole kingdom under the government of one sole king. So, Theotimus, over
the innumerable multitude and variety of actions, motions, feelings,
inclinations, habits, passions, faculties and powers which are in man, God has
established a natural monarchy in the will, which rules and commands all that is
found in this little world: and God seems to have said to the will as Pharao
said to Joseph: Thou shalt be over my house, and at the commandment of thy
mouth all the people shall obey. This dominion of the will is exercised indeed
in very various ways.
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